Critique of “Curriculum Theory and the Context of Curriculum”

George Willis has given us a complex paper that deals with a number of deep, persistent issues in curriculum theory. Actually, it can be viewed as two papers making the same point in different ways: curriculum theorists need to attend to a wider variety of meanings in the phenomena they theorize about. In the first part of his paper Willis criticizes the mainstream of modern American curriculum theorists for failing "to come to grips with the underlying problem of how to conceptualize and deal with experience." In brief critical synopses of Tyler's Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, Taba's Curriculum Development: Theory and Practice, and McNeil's recent chapter "Forces Influencing Curriculum" in the Review of Educational Research, he charges each of these authors with a one-sided attention to overt activities at the expense of inward experiences.